The Kia Sportage small SUV is a sharp-looking little rig, one of a growing line of new Kia designs that suggests something pretty cool is going on at Hyundai Motor's little brother.
For the latest, consider Kia's KV7 concept crossover with its gull-wing doors. I like the formula here: take a boxy crossover and add in gull-wing second-row doors and an apparent second row of swiveling seats. I would not be surprised to see something like this show up in Kia's production lineup one day.
The truth is, we should all expect Kia to try shaking up the car design world with concepts like the KV7 and production cars like the Kia Soul. That's the plan of Kia's design director, Peter Schreyer.
He's a German who turned his back on a career at Audi, Volkswagen AG's increasingly bold luxury brand, and went across town to Kia several years ago.
Across town? Absolutely. Schreyer hasn't left Germany to work in Seoul, the Korean capital. Not at all. Kia has a design centre in Frankfurt, as well as in Los Angeles and in the South Korean capital, Seoul. Schreyer lives in Frankfurt.
Design is the key to Kia's resurrection. Remember, Kia was bankrupt and essentially dead and buried about a decade ago when fellow Korean auto maker Hyundai swooped in to help.
Schreyer's story at Kia began four-plus years ago when the Koreans came calling.
"I think that Audi was in a very kind of similar position that Kia is today," he says, looking every bit the designer in his all-black outfit.
"It was the little brother of Volkswagen and at the time the cars were technically very good, but not that attractive. Little by little they (Audi) built up their design, technical abilities and built up the brand. I think that was a very important experience to go through that."
Kia is attempting a similar transformation. It envisions itself a youth brand, though still a mainstream offering, with affordable features and eye-grabbing styling – cheap chic.
Cheap chic. That's the corner of the market Kia wants to own.